Amber crouched in the ferns and counted her eggs again. Four in the hollow under the leaning trunk. Two more buried a short run northeast, under bark strips and matted leaves she had bitten and pressed into place herself. Six. Still six. For two mornings something had walked the west edge of her ground and left tracks she could not name. Her mother had held this territory before her, and her mother's mother before that. Her mother was dead now. Amber would not say how. The eggs were what was left, and she meant to keep them alive until they cracked. She checked the false nest first. The original cup sat open to the sky, lined with old leaves and three round river stones she had carried up at dusk. From above it would look like a clutch worth taking. The real nest, the hidden one, sat ten paces off in the crook of a dead tree. Bark strips woven tight. Leaves layered until the shape vanished into the trunk. She had stood over it at three angles last night and seen nothing. That was the only test that mattered. She went west to read the tracks again. The bent ferns were fresh. The scent was thicker today, sour and warm. She followed it to a stand of old trees at the edge of her range, and there she stopped. One trunk was split open from shoulder height down to the roots. Four gouges. Each one deeper than her own foreclaw could cut. The wood inside the cuts was raw and weeping. She set her own claw into the lowest mark and it sat inside the groove with room on both sides. Not a raptor. Not a pack. One animal, alone, tall enough to reach above her head and heavy enough to drag that cut down through the heartwood. She had seen the shape once across the river when she was small. Her mother had pulled her flat into the grass and waited until the ground stopped shaking. A tyrant. The big one. The kind that did not circle ground for two days unless it had already decided the ground was worth taking. Amber backed away from the tree without turning. Her plan had been to wait, to watch, to drive off whatever small thief was testing her edges. That plan was finished. She could not fight what had made those marks. She could not outrun it carrying eggs. She ran back to the hidden nest and pressed her snout against the nearest shell. Warm. Still warm. She had two choices now and both were bad. Move the clutch again, deeper east, and hope the scent trail did not lead the tyrant straight to them. Or stay, and bet the disguised cup and the false one would be enough when it came through. She had until dark to choose.

By dusk Amber had not chosen. She crouched by the hidden nest until her legs shook, and the shake was not from fear. It was hunger. She had not eaten since the day she split the clutch. Two days. Her tongue felt thick. The edges of the ferns blurred when she turned her head too fast. She could smell the tyrant's sour trail on the west wind, and under it she could smell her own weakness. A raptor who could not see straight could not guard anything. She left the nest before full dark and ran east, away from the scent line, toward the lean-to she had built two seasons ago at the base of a split rock. It was only branches lashed to four posts, roofed with bark, but it broke her shape against the trees and gave her a place to crouch while she watched the low ground. From there she had taken three kills last spring. She slid under the peak and waited. The ground in front of the shelter still held the marks of her last hunt. A scatter of gnawed bones lay half buried in leaves where she had dragged a small ornithopod down and eaten it through the night. Past the bones stood the marker she had built after that kill, four leg bones lashed crossways to a longer one, driven into the dirt. Her mother had taught her to set markers at good ground. Good ground was rare. You did not forget it. A hare came out of the brush at moonrise. It stopped to sniff the old bones. Amber's legs were stiff and her vision swam, and she almost moved too early. She held. The hare took two more steps. She came out from under the bark roof in one push and caught it against the marker post before it could turn. The neck broke under her foot. She ate where she stood, fast, swallowing fur and all, until her stomach pulled tight and the shake in her legs eased. She was licking blood off her claws when the ground moved. A slow, heavy thud, then another. Not close. Across the low ground, maybe two hundred paces west. She flattened against the split rock and watched. Between the trees a shape passed, taller than any tree trunk she could see around it, head low, tail swinging level with its spine. It was not following her. It was walking the river line, north to south, steady. It had not smelled the kill yet. The wind was with her. Amber waited until the thuds faded. Then she ran east, back toward the hidden nest, full-bellied and clear-eyed for the first time in two days. The tyrant was walking the river now. By morning it would be south of her ground, or it would turn and come straight up through the ferns to the false nest. She had fed herself. She had bought one night. She had not bought more.

Amber ran east with the hare's blood still on her teeth. She reached the hidden nest before the moon cleared the trees. The six eggs lay where she had left them, two in the northeast pocket under the fern roots, four in the deeper hollow under the split log. She pressed her snout to each one. All warm. All whole. Then she circled back toward the lean-to to sleep where she could watch the low ground. That was her mistake. She smelled them before she saw them. Sour fur, old teeth. Small scavengers had found the hare bones. The scatter lay torn apart now, white fragments flung wide, tufts of fur stuck between the pieces. Two ratty things crouched at the marker post, gnawing. A third dragged a rib into the brush. They were not the danger. The danger was the noise. Tooth on bone carried far in still air. Amber crouched at the split rock and counted. More were coming. She could hear them in the leaves on three sides. By dawn the ground around her shelter would look like a kill site, stones kicked loose, bones piled, branches snapped where they fought over scraps. Any tyrant working the wind would read it from a thousand paces. The hare had bought her one night and was now spending it back. She moved fast. She drove the first two off the bones with a hiss and a snap, then grabbed what was left of the carcass in her jaws. Skull. Spine. The biggest leg bones. She ran them three hundred paces south of the lean-to, into a dry wash she had hunted last spring, and dropped them at the base of a stump. She kicked leaves over the trail behind her. She came back and gathered the scattered fragments, every piece she could find, and carried them in two more trips. She left the marker post standing. She left her own scent thin. When she came back the third time, the scavengers were following her south, drawn by the drag scent. The ground around the lean-to was almost clean. Almost. A scavenger had piled stones and skull bits at the foot of the split rock while she worked, a low ugly heap of stacked rock and small skulls and broken branches. A scent pile. A claim. She knocked it apart with one sweep of her tail and scattered the pieces into the brush. Then she stood still and listened. The gnawing had moved south. The wind was still with her. No heavy thuds. She had pulled the noise away from her nest. She had pulled it away from herself. But she had laid a fresh blood trail south of the river line, straight toward the ground the tyrant had walked at moonrise. By dawn it would find the wash, or it would find her tracks leading back.